SaaS holds many benefits for smaller firms

As well as the cost-saving benefits that hosted data management offers businesses, smaller enterprises adopting the model are likely to free up overworked IT departments.

This is according to unified web, data and email content provider Websense, which said that there was likely to be an explosion in the number of smaller firms looking to utilize software as a service (SaaS).

Spencer Parker, group product manager at the company, explained that the take-up of SaaS applications by larger coporates has been "huge".

"There's been this whole downsizing [trend] over the last few years; IT departments are smaller, and [therefore] if they can outsource or go to SaaS for as many of these things as they possibly can it reduces the amount of work they have to do," he added.

It follows the publication of a recent report by research firm Forrester which forecasts that the SaaS will grow exponentially in the coming years, with the service forming a key part of the expansion of cloud computing.